Cracks had been found in walls next to a Fanling house where a balcony collapsed on Thursday, residents said yesterday.
Lai Law Kit-bing, who lives next to the block in Swallow Garden, Pik Fung Road, where the collapse took place, said cracks had been found where the balconies were fixed to the wall above her ground-floor flat last year.
'The management company said it was just a normal phenomenon for newly completed flats and repaired the second-floor balcony with a layer of cement. You can now see the balcony is not level.
'There is a similar crack in the third-floor balcony but it was just left there.
'We dare not walk under the balconies,' she said.
Ms Lai and some other owners said they had not known structural safety of indigenous houses was not regulated.
